In this detailed historical and sociological study of the development of scientific ideas, Jonathan Harwood argues that there is no such thing as a unitary scientific method driven by an internal logic. Rather, there are national styles of science that are defined by different values, norms, assumptions, research traditions, and funding patterns.

The first book-length treatment of genetics in Germany, Styles of Scientific Thought demonstrates the influence of culture on science by comparing the American with the German scientific traditions. Harwood examines the structure of academic and research institutions, the educational backgrounds of geneticists, and cultural traditions, among many factors, to explain why the American approach was much more narrowly focussed than the German.

This tremendously rich book fills a gap between histories of the physical sciences in the Weimar Republic and other works on the humanities and the arts during the intellectually innovative 1920s, and it will interest European historians, as well as sociologists and philosophers of science.

Chapter 1: Getting Started: the Argument, Method, and Context1.1 An Overview of the Argument1.2 Styles of Thought1.3 The Revolution in Morphology1.4 The Response to Specialization1.5 The Early Days of Mendelism in GermanyPart 1: The Peculiarities of German GeneticsChapter 2: The Genetics of Development2.1 Developmental Genetics in Germany during the 1920s2.2 Cytoplasmic Inheritance2.3 In Search of Simplicity: George Beadle's Approach to Physiological Genetics2.4 ConclusionChapter 3: Genetics and the Evolutionary Process3.1 The Debate over Natural Selection in Interwar Germany 3.2 The Implications of Cytoplasmic Inheritance for Evolutionary Theory3.3 The Controversy over Dauermodifications3.4 The Relation between the Plasmon and Dauermodifications 3.5 ConclusionChapter 4: Demarcating the Discipline: Germany versus the United States4.1 Patterns of Growth in Higher Education and Research 4.2 The Effect of University Structure upon Specialization 4.3 ConclusionChapter 5: Shifting FocusPart 2: Styles of Thought within the German Genetics CommunityChapter 6: Mapping the German Genetics Community6.1 Research Programs6.2 Forms of Organization6.3 Patterns of Funding6.4 Institutional Developments after 19336.5 ConclusionChapter 7: Imputing Styles of Thought7.1 Portraits in Contrast: Alfred Kuhn and Erwin Baur7.2 Imputing Styles of Thought7.3 Differences of Political Outlook7.4 ConclusionChapter 8: Mandarins Confront Modernization8.1 Bildung as Ideology8.2 Modernization Diversifies the Professoriate8.3 The Politics of the Professoriate8.4 Integrating Institutional and Societal Explanations8.5 ConclusionChapter 9: The Politics of Nuclear-Cytoplasmic Relations9.1 Critics of the Plasmon Theory9.2 Revisionist Conceptions of the Plasmon9.3 Models of Cellular Order9.4 The Cell as Political Microcosm9.5 Conclusion, Conclusion

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